Ben-DutkaAs if we needed to be told, Sony has officially announced that all PS3s available in North America last week have been sold out.
"All PS3s brought into the US last week sold out," said Dave Karraker, Sony Computer Entertainment America's senior vice president of corporate communications in a brief interview with GameSpot . "Feedback from our retail partners is that demand is still incredibly high and that PS3s put on store shelves were quickly snapped up by holiday shoppers."
Karraker didn't go into specifics regarding actual numbers of PS3 stock, but he did say that Sony remains on target to ship 1 million units to North America by the end of 2006. "We will continue to utilize airfreight delivery for the PlayStation 3 to ensure a steady stream of systems for North American consumers through the end of the year," the vice president claimed. GameStop/EB has already received their second shipment of consoles, which should've allowed the retailer to fill most all their preorders.
As for Sony's older consoles, demand remains quite high. Karakker revealed that sales of the PS2 rose 116.5% during the week of November 26 in comparison to the previous week. And the PSP did even better, spiking in a week-over-week increase of 280.5%, which may be due to the much-anticipated PSP/PS3 connectivity that includes transferring streaming media between the two consoles.
And finally, first-party software sales for the PS2 and PSP jumped to 120.6% and and 167.9% respectively, although Karakker provided no third-party info. As expected, the second half of November has been big for Sony, and if they can come through with those million PS3s for the holidays, December could be even better.